Southern Middle TN Today News with Tom Price 8-28-25

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Southern Middle Tennessee Today

News Copy for August 28, 2025

All news stories are aggregated from various sources and modified for time and content. Original sources are cited.

We start with local news…

Spring Hill Initiatives (MSM)

From planning future water and sewer expansions to equipping students with hands-on training tools, the Spring Hill Board of Mayor and Aldermen moved forward on a pair of initiatives aimed at community growth Monday night. 

The board approved a resolution authorizing the mayor to execute a professional services agreement with McNeely Brockman Public Relations, LLC, for the development of a utility public engagement program on upcoming water and sewer expansion projects. 

Per the request of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), which has been working closely with the city, the city staff recommended McNeely Brockman Public Relations LLC, with a contract that runs from Aug. 5, 2025, through Aug. 5, 2026, and should not exceed $90,000. 

Traffic Calming

The board voted to terminate the city’s traffic calming program after determining it caused negative consequences and failed to meet its intended goals. 

The program, originally designed to improve traffic safety by reducing speeds and promoting a safer driving environment, was evaluated through data studies, public feedback and consultations with city staff. Findings showed the program did not achieve its purpose, prompting the board to dissolve and reallocate its funding. 

The funds will support the addition of two to three Spring Hill Police Department officers dedicated to traffic enforcement. These officers will focus on enforcing speed limits, monitoring high-traffic areas and addressing dangerous driving patterns. 

Both resolutions took effect immediately following last week’s board meeting. 

Abandoned Property

The Spring Hill Police Department received approval to donate abandoned property to Spring Hill High School Skills USA, an organization that teaches high school students trade skills. 

In 2021, the police department discovered a rental storage unit when serving a search warrant. Construction tools were found in the unit and taken into police possession and logged as evidence. 

After being unable to locate the renter, who no longer resides in Spring Hill, the police department wishes to donate the tools to Skills USA to teach trade classes to students at Spring Hill High School. The donation is the value of the used tools, which are estimated to be worth less than $4,500. 

In previous business, the board approved the second and final reading of Ordinance 25-21, the rezoning of the unincorporated Spring Hill 18.5-acre property from Agriculture District (AG) to Institutional Campus District (IC). 

Ashwood Hall Development (MSM)

The Mt. Pleasant City Commission turned in a split 3-2 vote to move forward with the John Maher Builders development on the Columbia Pike. The vote gave first-reading approval to annexing and rezoning the 106-acre Armstrong field at the intersection of Zion Road and Columbia Pike; second-reading passage would allow Maher to build 247 housing units and a wastewater treatment facility there.

Public comment will be heard at Mt. Pleasant City Hall at 5 p.m. on Sept. 11, before the City Commission’s next monthly study session. Because of the expected number of attendees, Mt. Pleasant Mayor Bill White advised would-be public commenters to get together and assign their talking points to a smaller number of speakers. Opponents of the development have created a Facebook group, “Mt. Pleasant Neighbors for Sustainable Growth,” to connect and share information.

The Mt. Pleasant Planning Commission voted 2-3 against the zoning request at its July meeting, after hearing a great deal of public comment opposing an R3 zoning — the densest possible residential zoning, which normally requires proximity to a city downtown district. To overrule the planning commission’s recommendation, the city commission had to publish its own rationales for why the R3 zoning fulfills the four bylaws that govern rezoning.

“We had a good… conversation concerning this property, and heard a lot of good things,” White said about the August study session, before he delivered the city’s reasoning at the voting session. “We’re going to have to talk through this extensively, to make sure we followed this as we should.”

Rezoning Reasoning

The first rezoning bylaw dictates that the new R3 zoning must agree with the land-use plan for the area. The mayor justified it by pointing to the developments already surrounding the field, which are now Mt. Pleasant city territory and weren’t built or zoned to conform with the city’s land use plan.

“In the vicinity you’ve got a dollar store… a convenience store, two restaurants [and a trailer park],” White said.

Some public commenters argued that the preservation of silence at the Polk Memorial Gardens cemetery across the highway, and of the view from the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church next to it, were reason enough to leave the Armstrong field undeveloped.

City Commissioner Pam Johnston, who serves on the planning commission and initially cast one of the “no” votes, came to agree with the mayor after she drove up to the area and saw that the adjacent properties were developed.

The second bylaw forbids developments that cause “adverse effects for nearby property owners,” unless they can be justified by the “overwhelming public good or welfare.” White argued that the public welfare was adequately served by the increased income to the city from the development’s property taxes, sales taxes, and building permits. The other two “yes” voters on the commission agreed with him.

“We could use the money. We have streets and other things that could get fixed,” said Commissioner Willie Alderson, who added that she hadn’t received any phone calls from her constituents asking her to vote against the neighborhood. “I have to do what’s best for Mt. Pleasant.”

“If we have the opportunity to have quality homes that represent… and benefit Mt. Pleasant, I think that’s actually a help to the surrounding environment,” said Johnston.

Commissioner Loree Knowles countered that she had been asked by both Mt. Pleasant citizens and outsiders, especially residents of the rural county around the planned neighborhood, to vote the development down.

“Most of the calls that I’ve received are not in favor of the zoning,” she said, “which puts me in quite a pickle, but… the citizens of Mt. Pleasant… have spoken.”

The third bylaw requires the city to verify that “no small group of property owners will benefit materially, to the detriment of the general public.” White cast the incoming residents as the beneficiaries.

“The owners would be people buying the homes,” he said, “so I don’t see how it would materially benefit them, other than having a roof over their head.”

No commissioners disagreed with him, though some public commenters fingered John Maher Builders or the city’s own coffers as the real winners at the public’s expense.

Finally, the city commission agreed that the area had changed enough to warrant a change to the land-use plan and zoning.

“You’re gonna have [more than] 700 homes right up the street. There is sufficient [growth] to warrant an amendment… It’s here, whether we want it or not,” White explained.

The commission also agreed in the study session that other R3 and light industrial zoning already exists nearby, including a rail yard.

Commissioners Split

“This is the toughest thing any of us have had to deal with since I’ve been on the commission,” Johnston admitted. “I have gone backwards and forwards, and I didn’t come to my conclusion… until last night.”

On one of her evening walks, Johnston was inspired by the civic life she saw around town: youth practicing sports, businesses opening on the renovated Main Street and elsewhere and friendships among newcomers, lifetimers and multi-generational residents of Mt. Pleasant. These signs of life, and the build quality of John Maher Builders’ other homes, prompted her to vote for the development.

“People are excited,” she said. “They see what’s happening at the airport… with our main street… in our business community at Cherry Glen. We’re getting some amazing things happening there.”

“I’ve struggled with this, I’m not going to tell anybody any stories about it… I’m going to tell you just exactly how I feel,” White said. “I’ve [driven] up there, I can’t tell you how many times to look at it, and you look down the street and you’ve got apartments… [and] a trailer park. You look at the financial benefit… [and] the development this could add to this community, what it could do for the downtown that we have just spent a fortune on.”

“When you look over the high-density residential [definition]… it says ‘it should be located adjacent to downtown.’ It doesn’t say ‘must’ or ‘shall,’ so there’s a little leeway,” conceded Commissioner Mike Davis.

Still, he cast one of the two “no” votes, along with Commissioner Loree Knowles, because he couldn’t bring himself to incorporate an area for which the city couldn’t provide all services.

“It’s hard for me to vote for it. ‘It’s money for the city’ — I realize that. But money’s not everything,” he explained. “I hate to be a negative person, but… when you can’t provide the services, it’s all about money.”

Road Named for Marlin (MSM)

The Maury County Commission honored the NASCAR driver Sterling Marlin at its August meeting, by asking the state to name a stretch of Highway 31 after him, from Carters Creek Pike to Raider Lane.

Marlin grew up in Maury County, the son of the regionally famous NASCAR driver Clifton “Coo Coo” Marlin. He graduated from the gyms and gridirons of Spring Hill High School to driving in NASCAR from 1976-2010. He made the NASCAR all-time list of the “75 Greatest Drivers” and won consecutive Daytona 500 races in 1994 and 1995 — an accomplishment shared by only four other drivers, winning him Tennessee Professional Athlete of the Year in both years.

Jimmy Campbell, a family friend of the Marlins, once asked the young driver why he became a racer.

“He said, ‘Well, you go out in a tobacco patch and work a couple years, you’ll find another vocation,'” Campbell chuckled.

Marlin himself took the podium and said a few words, in a low voice impacted by Parkinson’s disease. He talked fondly about his first practice car, a 1957 Nash Metropolitan that cost his father $50, which he drove up and down his family’s driveway at age 12.

“In the world of sports, you put Maury County, Tennessee on the map,” County Clerk Joey Allen told him. “Thank you very much.”

Sandy Hook bridge closure

During public comment at last week’s county commission meeting, residents of Sandy Hook demanded that the county reopen the closed bridge over Big Bigby Creek. The Sandy Hook Bridge was the most convenient and safest route out of their rural community, and some contested TDOT’s designation of the bridge as unsafe and the county’s plans to demolish and replace it.

TDOT evaluated the bridge in 2020 and declared that it was in “poor” condition (a technical term, meaning it has either “widespread moderate or isolated major defects”), prompting the county Highway Department under Van Boshers to close it in early 2022. A group of residents filed a preliminary injunction in 2023 to force the county to reopen the bridge, but a judge threw out the injunction for lack of evidence of “immediate harm.”

Maury County Highways received another Bridge Evaluation Report from TDOT two weeks ago, restating the risks and requiring them to keep the bridge closed to traffic. TDOT found that the deck and parapets of the bridge are in “poor” condition, with deteriorated and cracked concrete; they gave the spandrel, breastwalls, substructure and two piers of the bridge “critical” ratings, two degrees worse than “poor,” because of deterioration that reached a depth of several inches in some parts.

County Highways personnel are at work replacing another bridge on Old Highway 43, which is about a mile away and projected to open in about 18 months. Earlier in August, Superintendent Ken McKee told the Safety Committee that restoring the Sandy Hook bridge would take 3-5 years, making the Old 43 bridge the fastest way to restore transportation to and from Sandy Hook.

Several people claimed that the alternate routes out of Sandy Hook, which must be reached by Johnson Hill Road, add several miles in each direction, and furthermore pass over winding roads on steep hills. Emergency Medical Services have to take the longer route, and at least one EMS vehicle is on video driving up to the bridge and backtracking after discovering the roadblock. Commissioner Danny Grooms, who works on roads for TDOT, expressed concern that the county could be held liable if a patient were really harmed by prolonged response times.

“Somebody needs to contact Maury Regional dispatch and get them to put that detour in their CAD system,” Commissioner Scott Sumners said in Safety Committee.

Jason Gilliam of the county water utility and Kevin Davis repeated the claims of bridge-preservation groups that the Sandy Hook Bridge is a special piece of history and architecture worth preserving. It’s one of only five bridges in its style that remain in the U.S.A., and the only one in Tennessee.

“I would argue that this bridge is as historic as our courthouse,” Gilliam told the commission. “Do whatever is necessary to save and preserve the five-arch bridge.”

Others contested the definitive nature, or even the legality of the closure. Charles Gandy, the retired manager of Mt. Pleasant Power, saw TDOT’s “poor” rating as a kind of “agreement to disagree” about the bridge’s safety. He said that in a private conversation, Sen. Joey Hensley had suggested reopening the bridge to one crossing vehicle at a time.

Gandy and Davis pointed out that it hasn’t been washed away by recent high tides.

“That bridge has gone through decades of floods, and it’s still there,” Davis said. Still, he claimed to have brought experts down to evaluate the bridge, and they found it was backing up Big Bigby Creek during floods. He suggested raising the elevation of the current bridge or a future one to allow floodwaters to pass through.

Vicky Jones claimed that 29 other bridges in the county have received the same “poor” rating that TDOT gave it in 2020, yet they haven’t been closed. Commissioner Davis Burkhalter, who was on the County Commission when the Sandy Hook bridge came before it, recalled that it received the worst TDOT safety rating in the county. Commissioner Kenny Morrow and Superintendent McKee said that it wouldn’t even fulfill modern standards for a pedestrian bridge.

Jones and Sue Bassham argued that the bridge closure wasn’t preceded by necessary steps like two weeks’ notice to property owners, publication in the paper, or supermajority votes by the planning and county commissions. Instead, it was “closed at dawn the morning after a county commission [meeting]” in 2022, in a move by then-Superintendent Boshers, which they claimed was illegal.

“TDOT has never said this bridge is ‘unsafe,'” Jones said. “This was done out of spite. Mr. Boshers announced he was going to close it in May 2022 and the next day, he did.”

The residents have created a Facebook group called “Sandy Hook Five Arch Bridge” dedicated to the reopening and preservation of the bridge.

Maury County Fair Returns (CDH)

The Maury County Fair & Expo Livestock Show returns this week with a full weekend of rides, events, a rodeo and more.

In addition to popular events like motocross and beef shows, the rodeo will return to Maury County Fair Aug. 28, Bulls, Broncs and Barrels starting at 7 p.m. in the back arena.

According to fair representatives, the annual weekend of fun will be bigger, bring more food and more activities, including a 5k run.

Maury County Fair President Randy Zeigler said this year will be bigger, better and more expansive in all areas.

"We have a lot of new things this year and have expanded the fairgrounds for the first time ever," Zeigler said.

"We've added more rides, and even have a few dragons that will be coming, and these are some pretty realistic dragons, which we are excited about. We've also got a huge petting zoo, and our food court has almost doubled in size, as well as our non-food vendors. They have expanded quite a bit."

The 2025 Maury County Fair will also introduce the first My Day 5K and one-mile trot starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, with proceeds benefiting the King's Daughters' School, Maury County Special Olympics and Best Buddies of Tennessee.

"Last year we had 1,200 kids show up for My Day, and we've already got 1,200 pre-registered," Zeigler said. "We are pretty excited and are expecting record numbers. We are busting at the seems here at the park right now."

Also, don't miss goat, beef and other livestock shows, a tractor pull and a hot pepper eating contest.

For more information, visit www.MauryCountyFair.org.

Breakfast with the Mayors (Press Release)

Join Maury Alliance for a special morning of breakfast, conversation, and community insight with our local mayors!

This annual gathering brings together local leaders for meaningful dialogue, collaboration, and a shared vision for Maury County’s future. Attendees will have the unique opportunity to hear updates on local initiatives, ask questions, and strengthen connections that impact our region.

Enjoy a delicious breakfast provided by Puckett’s Restaurant.

Speakers:

• Moderator – Maury Alliance President Wil Evans

• Maury County Mayor – Sheila Butt

• City of Columbia Mayor – Chaz Molder

• City of Mt. Pleasant Mayor – Bill White

• City of Spring Hill Mayor – Matt Fitterer

The event will take place at the Memorial Building located at 308 W. 7th Street on Tuesday, September 9th from 7:30-9:00am.

The cost is $25 for Chamber members and $30 for non-members.

And now, Your Hometown Memorials, Sponsored by Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home…

Mrs. Jewell Lee Horne Dean, 95, a lifelong resident of Maury County, passed away on August 22. A graveside service will be conducted Friday, August 29 at 11:00 a.m. at Rose Hill Cemetery

Larry Wayne Love, 72, a resident of Culleoka, died Monday, August 25, 2025 at his residence.

Funeral services will be conducted Friday, August 29, 2025 at 2:00 PM at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home with Reverend Mike Roberts officiating. Burial will follow in Lynnwood Cemetery in Lynnville with military honors provided by Herbert Griffin American Legion Post 19. The family will visit with friends Thursday from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home. Online condolences may be extended at www.oakesandnichols.com.

Minnie Greenfield Morrow, 94, died Tuesday, August 26, 2025 at her residence in Columbia.

Funeral services will be conducted Saturday, August 30, 2025 at 2:00 PM at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home with John Thomas officiating. Burial will follow in Morrow Cemetery in Hampshire. The family will visit with friends Saturday from 12:00 noon until 2:00 PM at Oakes & Nichols Funeral Home.

Now, news from around the state…

MTSU Names Center After Borchetta (Tennessean)

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) has renamed its College of Media and Entertainment in honor of Big Machine Label Group founder, chairman and CEO Scott Borchetta.

The school's name change is accompanied by what MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee said was Borchetta's $15 million "transformational investment" in support of the College of Media and Entertainment. Stephen Smith, chairman of MTSU's Board of Trustees, said it is one of the largest investments ever made to an academic unit at the university.

The renaming announcement took place in the atrium of MTSU's Bragg Media and Entertainment Building, which now houses the Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment.

"I want to build bridges for young minds by inspiring them, lifting them up and giving back to them," said Borchetta, who was joined by his wife, Sandi, executives from Big Machine and the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Grand Prix. The capacity crowd included Big Machine-signed country chart-topper Carly Pearce and hundreds of students, faculty and staff members.

Borchetta, who famously dropped out of college after two semesters, said having his name on an MTSU building was a "legacy-defining" moment that allowed him to help define "the path to success" that he, as an aspiring music industry executive, never saw for himself as a student.

"The Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment represents the next generation of innovators and creators, whose bold ideas will transform the media landscape," Borchetta said.

Borchetta also noted that he was inspired by and indebted to the work of another longtime Nashville music executive in attendance, Mike Curb. The Curb Records impresario has achieved significant success through his three decades of involvement in Belmont University's Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business.

Recently, Belmont opened the first phase of its Curb-funded $58 million Music Row expansion of its College of Entertainment & Music Business.

Dean Beverly Keel noted that Borchetta's forthcoming contributions would be in addition to the building upgrades, scholarship opportunities, trips to the Bonnaroo festival, e-sports conferences and Grammy Awards trips he has previously funded for MTSU students.

Final Story of the Day (Maury County Source)

The ongoing celebration marking the Grand Ole Opry's 100th anniversary is getting a spotlight at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum thanks to a new exhibit.

"The Grandest Stage: The Opry at 100" will run from Sept. 18 through March 2027.

"The Opry’s status as America’s leading country music radio show ... made possible Nashville’s emergence as the undisputed center of the country music industry," said Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will also host a panel discussion featuring Opry members Vince Gill and Carly Pearce, plus Dan Rogers, senior vice president and executive producer of the Grand Ole Opry. Paul Kingsbury, the museum's senior director of editorial and interpretation, will moderate the discussion. The program will take place at 2 p.m. Sept. 18 in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's Ford Theater.

Tickets will be available on www.countrymusichalloffame.org.